Somebody's Daughter (31 page)

Indeed, when Jay promised Amber he could find her an apartment, her interest was immediately piqued—and he could already see himself paying off that whopping five-thousand-dollar fine that prevented him from renewing his driver's license and getting a set of wheels again. The fine had long been forgotten by the irresponsible pimp; it was an insurance company judgment issued against him in 1972 when he had been at fault in an accident and did not have coverage. He had forgotten about it but the registry of motor vehicles had not. He had been informed of the problem when a Nova Scotia police officer ordered him to get a valid drivers license after he was stopped for running a stop sign. His license had long since expired and when Jay went to get a new one he was told the price would be five thousand and ten dollars. Five thousand would cover the insurance judgment and ten would take care of the renewal fee. Jay was using Amber to get what he wanted, but she was also using him to find a place for her and the baby to live, and an incentive to kick her crack habit. Pimps, she knew well, did not tolerate their girls using drugs, and she hoped the fear of violent retaliation on his part would be enough to keep her clean.

Unlike Manning Greer, who could take in more money in a month than Jay often made in a year, Amber's new man couldn't afford to rent an apartment for her—but he did know how to work the system. After the teenager picked up her daughter, telling her foster parents she'd found a job and an apartment, Jay took her to the local welfare office, and—presto!—a bit of cash and a place to live. Her objective, unfortunately, dissolved in the fumes from her first crack pipe as Jay's girl. Only a few days after going to work for the pimp, Amber found a way to work both the north-end and Hollis strolls—one early in the evening, the downtown area later at night—thus earning enough to satisfy both her habit and her new man.

It was perfect; at least, for awhile. The Game's information pipeline eventually led Jay to the truth; he caught Amber in the apartment one night passing around a pipe with another prostitute and a taxi driver she'd befriended on the crack stroll. The cabby took up Jay's invitation for him to leave—“You, get the fuck out
now!
”—and the pimp turned on Amber in a wild rage, kicking her violently in the stomach and legs, cursing her as a useless crack-head who was wasting his money, and finally, exhausted by his workout, adopting his familiar line of asking his girl if she somehow
needed
such punishment because she only felt loved when beaten. “Most 'hos” come from broken homes and they see a beating as sign of affection: that was Jay's rationalization for whatever viciousness he felt provoked to express. His bizarre “therapy” out of the way, Jay brought in Amber's daughter: how would
she
feel to have a crack addict as a mom? He raved on, as the other prostitute sat numbly in a corner and Amber, her dizziness still making the room spin around her, wishing Jay would shut up. Finally he ordered her to dress for work; Amber obeyed sullenly, but her attitude soon changed when he casually informed her, en route downtown, that her daughter would not be coming back to the apartment that night; the child needed protection from such a drug-infested environment. Amber's frantic tears and pleas were all Jay needed to hear; he knew he had a powerful weapon against her, and fully intended to use it. He took Amber's baby to his apartment and found a bubble-gummer to do the babysitting.

For three days, obedient and terrified, Amber stayed away from the crack stroll and the addictive drug; but still Jay refused to return her child. One late December night, as the emaciated, miserable teenager stood shivering on the stroll in her spandex pants and a jacket, Darrell Gaudet and his partner cruised by. The officer invited Amber to get warm in the car for awhile—and maybe she just wanted someone to chat with—and she gratefully complied. The young woman desperately wanted to ask Gaudet for help, but she didn't dare risk Jay's wrath; he had her baby, and the child was really all that kept her going. When Gaudet saw he wasn't going to get anywhere, he dropped Amber off on the stroll, once again reminding her that he would be there to help any time she needed him.

At the end of the night, Jay met Amber and Deena on Hollis and took them to his place, telling the younger girl he wanted to talk to her. Amber had fallen off the wagon and was still a little high. She had managed to sneak a hit before the end of the night—and she slumped gratefully into the sofa at Jay's invitation, looking around with disgust at her man's slovenly housekeeping. Like that of most pimps, his sparsely furnished apartment was a disaster area, strewn with dirty dishes, bags, cans, and fast-food wrappers. Amber and Deena settled down to watch a late-night TV talk show, and Jay joined them. He seemed affable at first, but suddenly he whipped around on the sofa and slapped Amber, then hauled her into the bathroom, where the tub was brimming.

“Jay, what's wrong? Why are you doing this?” She knew what was coming.

“Gonna sign on Jay, bitch? Jay ain't nobody's fool, woman. Jay knows who you been talkin' to, you stupid 'ho.” Deena had spotted her getting into the cruiser with Gaudet and had called Jay. Amber was terrified as Jay pushed her into the tub and forced her head under the water. She'd fallen in backwards and managed to drape her right arm over the side, so she pulled with all her might to stay on the surface.

“Jay, please! I'm not signing on anyone!” she insisted. “He's a friend of my father, and he just wanted me to leave and go home, Jay, stop pushing me—I didn't tell him about you.” By now the pimp was too angry to placate. “Jay knows you still takin' crack, too. That's my fuckin' money you been wastin', slut.
My
fuckin' money, not yours. You ain't gonna waste no more of Jay's money, you hear me?”

Amber did hear him—and so did the upstairs tenant, who sat up in bed, unsure what to do next. They were arguing about money, he could hear; and you didn't necessarily want to intervene in an argument between a couple over financial matters. He decided to wait and listen. Downstairs, Jay was still trying to get Amber's head underwater; his hands too slippery to hold her, he tried standing and kicking her over and over in the chest, then the face. There was a terrible crash as the shower curtain and rod came down—he'd been yanking on it to stand up—but Jay just kept slamming his foot into Amber's body. Closing her eyes, Amber tried to resist the downward slide into the water, but the arm holding her up was growing numb, and the blows to her head were weakening her resolve. Suddenly, Jay stepped away from the tub, and Amber opened her eyes to see her baby crawling towards the bathroom, gurgling happily. She wanted to call out to the child but she didn't have the strength, and Jay had already carried the little girl back into the bedroom, where she'd been sleeping on the floor with the sitter. Amber later recalled the incident, “It was a miracle, she had never crawled before and if she didn't do it at that moment I know I'd be dead.” Weakly, Amber hauled herself out of the tub and staggered into the living room, where she sat stiffly on the sofa, her sopping body trembling with shock and cold, her helpless tears coursing down her ravaged face. All was deathly quiet; the man upstairs drifted back to sleep and the now calm jay who'd lost his resolve at the site of the baby was rummaging through the linen closet for a bath towel. Returning to the living room, he wrapped the towel around Amber and calmly began to reprove her for “forcing” him to punish her that way—another familiar approach pimps take to avoid responsibility for their brutality, as Stacey Jackson had discovered after Smit beat her with the wire whip.

When he got tired of talking—and that took quite some time—Jay scooped up a few blankets from the filthy floor and tossed them over Amber, who, ignoring her wet clothes, curled up and fell asleep. When she awoke, Jay and Deena were gone, and so was her daughter. She didn't bother to look for something to change into, just staggered out into the cold, grey morning, found a pay phone, and called a friend, who agreed to let Amber come to her place for a few days.

Darrell Gaudet had spent a sleepless night worrying about finding a way to help the badly addicted and obviously frightened Amber, but he had to put her out of his mind for the moment; the officer was about to move on a nineteen-year-old pimp who had savagely beaten a prostitute of sixteen. The girl, who had come to the task force looking for help, warned police that the man had a gun and had boasted of a black belt in Karate. “He'd rather die than get arrested,” as she put it to Gaudet. It was bullet-proof vests all round as several unmarked task-force vehicles started their pursuit early in the evening. The detectives waited for the best opportunity to make their move. It came when the pimp cruised down a quiet tree lined street. There were no pedestrians, and that reduced the risk of someone getting hurt if the pimp started shooting. Gaudet slipped the portable flashing light onto the dash of the unmarked car and watched as the pimp pulled over to the curb. As his partner covered him, Gaudet approached the car; the teenager stepped out quickly, his hands behind his head. By the time he was in the back of the cruiser, listening as Gaudet read him his rights, the dangerous martial artist with the death wish was weeping like a toddler. Gaudet and his partner exchanged disgusted glances as they headed back to Dartmouth. It was a scene that would be played out again and again, as investigators discovered many of the pimps, so fearless about brutalizing a slight teenage girl, turned to jelly when confronted with aggression. Like schoolyard bullies, or wolves, they culled the weak from the herd and only struck when they knew they had the upper hand.

Gaudet would soon have another opportunity to test his budding theory on the psychology of bullies. In the first week of January 1993, Amber finally decided to talk to the task force investigator who had patiently held out his promise of help for almost two months. She had been working the crack stroll and getting high ever since New Year's Eve, when Jay, once again using her child as leverage, spent what was supposed to be a celebration dinner with his family, trying to persuade Amber to return to Hollis Street as his girl. She refused, and he told her to forget about ever seeing her daughter again. He had visited the social worker at the welfare office and told her all about Amber's crack habit, and soon she would be declared an unfit mother and her baby placed in care. That wasn't quite true: Jay had seen Amber's worker—and done nothing to correct the woman's inference that he was the child's father—but no mention was made of action against Amber. The social worker simply told Jay that Amber would have to decide that she wanted help to break her habit. Amber knew nothing of this; when Jay left the party briefly, she met her friend the crack-addicted cabbie and made for the north-end stroll—and some all-too-temporary relief for her anguish. Four days later Amber finally made her move. She went to visit the welfare case officer.

Amber told the understandably confused social worker that Jay had abducted her daughter in an attempt to force her to return to prostitution; the woman took in Amber's black eye—a legacy of Jay's submersion attempt—and gaunt, agitated appearance, then told the teenager her pimp's version of events. Jay, who had come into the office the day before, claimed she had abandoned her child to work the streets and take drugs. With him on the visit was Amber's daughter, who was now in care. She couldn't promise anything, the social worker said, as gently as possible, but perhaps Amber would be willing to talk to someone from the task force on prostitution. “Darrell Gaudet—” the teenager said. “He said he would help me.” And she burst into tears.

Later that day, Amber finally told Gaudet all about Jay, and her daughter, and the beatings. He immediately made arrangements for her to go to Sullivan House, and obtained a warrant for the pimp's arrest. Taking Jay into custody was even easier than nailing the nineteen-year-old bully. Still obsessed with that unpaid fine but unable to come up with the cash, Jay decided to fight it out in court; an official at the provincial courthouse in downtown Halifax called Gaudet shortly after the warrant was issued, telling him the suspect was there to argue his case. When Jay finished testifying, Gaudet simply walked up to him and placed him under arrest for assault, attempted murder, and living on the avails of prostitution.

Stacey and Amber bonded quickly at Sullivan House—hardly surprising, since they were among the oldest girls at the safe house and had already met in Toronto. They were both single mothers of very young children they faced losing to the courts. The Nova Scotia Department of Social Services sought custody of Amber's daughter, arguing that the child deserved more stability than her mother could provide, and the family of Stacey's former boyfriend had asked for full custody of her son. Both teenagers already sensed the inevitable—their children would be taken from them—and soon began to reconsider their decisions to leave The Game.

Stacey openly discussed her doubts with John Elliott: Why should she leave the street for a “shit job” paying minimum wage, and live in the square world with people who could never understand what she'd been through? And yeah, she was talking to a pimp on the phone these days; why shouldn't she? It was a free country, wasn't it? Besides, he had promised her that he would never, ever treat her the way Smit did. And speaking of Smit, maybe she wouldn't testify against him after all. Maybe the task force was all just about using her and the other girls—as her would-be man had told her—just to get their statement and their testimony, then the officers would move onto the next case and forget all about them. Elliott argued passionately with Stacey, who had, he told her, the talent and energy to be anything she wanted in life. She only had to be patient with herself, learn to believe in herself again. It was the pimps who were playing the manipulation game, who were using the girls—not to mention beating them within an inch of their lives, as she well knew. Sure, they were polite and gentle on the phone, but what evidence did she have that they wouldn't turn vicious when she joined them? Hadn't they done that in the past, to her, to her friend Amber, to her friend Annie Mae? Didn't they deserve to be put away where they could never hurt another girl again?